United Nations reorganization and the Disaster Management Training Programme

Introduction

PART 1 Drought

PART 2 Famine

PART 3 Institutional issues

References

Footnotes

Annex 1: Acronyms

Module Evaluation

Footnotes

1 By virtue of costly technology that allows salt to
be removed from water, desalinised sea water has become an important source of
water for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes in some of the arid,
oil rich states of the Middle East. However, this unique water source is not
considered here.

2 For the USA the total costs and losses of the
1987-89 drought have been compared to estimates of the losses that might be
expected from the worst case hurricane - roughly $7 billion, and the
worst case earthquake - between $30-50 billion (Riebsame et al.
1991)

3 Some researchers, notably de Waal (1989), have
questioned wether famine necessarily involves increased mortality, and on the
basis of the terms used by the population in his study area (Darfur, Western
Sudan) distinguishes between famines that kill and
famines that may not kill but result in hunger,
destitution and social breakdown. This distinction helps by a) showing that
those affected by famine may define it differently to those definitions used by
outsiders, and b) that for those affected the process leading up to increased
mortality has a similar importance to the threat of increased mortality.

4 The current internationally accepted standards for
calorie and micronutrient intake to enable an active and healthy
life are contained in WHO
(1985).